ICE Canola Closes Mostly Higher As C$ Weakens

WINNIPEG – Canola futures on the ICE Canada trading platform finished mainly higher on Friday with the continued downfall in the value of the Canadian dollar behind some of the price strength, market watchers said.

The Canadian unit had weakened to around the 99.00 US cent level with the US currency. The downswing has stimulated fresh demand from the export sector as well as from domestic crushers, brokers said.

However, with the strong usage of the crop, old crop canola stocks are believed to have tightened significantly, and in turn has forced values to climb in order to ration some of the usage.

There were continued rumours of fresh Canadian canola export sales made during the week, but confirmation was not available.

Nervous investors, concerned about holding short positions, were also buying back those contracts during the session, helping to augment the gains seen in the old crop months, traders said.

Chart-based buying by commodity fund accounts further underpinned canola futures during the session.

Weakness in CBOT soybean contracts and late day profit-taking helped to curb some of the upside seen in canola.

Scale up hedge selling by elevator companies, most of which was tied to steady farmer deliveries of canola into the cash pipeline, further restricted the upward price push in canola, traders said. Much of the farmer movement of canola was tied to elevator companies offering over C$14.00 per bushel.

Spreading was a feature of the activity in canola and contributed to the volume total.

There were an estimated 20,996 canola contracts traded Friday, up slightly from the 22,571 contracts that changed hands during the previous session. Of the contracts that changed hands, 11,566 were spread related.